


with an intellect, and a savoir-faire

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [24]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Anorexia, Collegestuck, Gen, Genderqueer Character, Humanstuck, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, the writer apologizes, the writer has not properly studied time signatures since high school orchestra/chorus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 16:56:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12845475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: You are Latula Pyrope, and you are the balance in between, loathe as either of your partners are to fully acknowledge it, loathe as you are to slip into that role and everything it requires.You lose count and you're glad of it.





	with an intellect, and a savoir-faire

**Author's Note:**

> title stolen from lyrics from Prince's "7"

You wake up at a quarter after 7 in the morning, sandwiched between your two favorite people. 

Porrim’s stomach rises and falls gently, one of her arms thrown over her eyes.

Mituna snores loudly enough to wake the dead, halfway falling off the futon.

“Hey babe?” you ask, poking Porrim in the side.

She opens her eyes and squints against the dim illumination Mituna’s night light gives off.

“Mmm?” she asks.

“I gotta go to the bathroom,” you say.

She moves so you can get up, and quickly goes back to sleep.

You’re glad. She was up studying until mad late.

You get up and realize you are not wearing any underwear. You grin and put on your glasses before it occurs to you to wonder where the hell they went. Whatever. After you use the bathroom, you grab a pair of Mituna’s boxers and put them on. They’re tight, but they sort of fit, as long as you don’t breathe too hard.

Okay, they don’t fit in the least.

You take them off, fold them up, and put them back where you found them. Both Porrim and Mituna have seen you naked a million times.

You stroll into the kitchen and turn on the light, intent on a cup of coffee. You look around on the counter until you find your alprazolam, which is sitting next to your phone. You take one, and check your texts. Just Kankri asking if he can borrow your Intro to Comparative Politics textbook, and Terezi asking what time you’ll be home.

Kankri never gives you back your books, and the empty space in your bookcase always makes you feel pissed off and vaguely out of place. The only way he can borrow your book is if you sit there and watch him the whole time. You text him something to that effect.

As for Terezi, you should be home in twelve hours. You text her something to that effect.

You inhale, exhale, and imagine yourself on your skateboard, gliding over the seams in the sidewalk.

You grin again, and put on the coffee.

Mituna sleeps like the dead, but the smell of coffee usually wakes hir up. You pick up your Poli Sci 254 textbook to the last page you were highlighting, then remember that you’re forgetting something. You dig around in the cabinet for the cinnamon, carefully avoiding the bottle with a square of paper attached to it that reads “not cinnamon”.

Porrim and Mituna got tired of accidentally putting powdered ginger in their coffee, although you thought it was fucking hysterical when they complained about it.

You pour the coffee into one of Porrim’s mugs.

Two sugars, three creamers, and six clockwise stirs.

One two  _three,_ four, five,  _six._

You sip your coffee, and dump out Mituna’s ashtray. Or Porrim’s. You’re not really sure. You steal a cigarette from whoever left their pack next to the ashtray, put it in your mouth, and light it.

You didn’t start smoking until last year, your first year of college. It’s a delightfully filthy habit, despite the fact the smell makes you want a shower as soon as you take your first drag. Unlike the two people snoring on the futon - who both go through half pack a day - you could probably make 20 cigarettes last nearly a month.

You gently tap out your ashes in the ashtray, and take another sip of coffee. Porrim must wake up at the smell of coffee and cigarettes, because she walks into the kitchen a few seconds later, a few of her braids having worked their way free from her silk cap.

“Morning,” she says.

You tell her to turn so you can put the braids back in her cap. She smiles, picks up a mug, and pours herself a cup of coffee. You put in the requisite single creamer. No sweetener. Any more, and she won't drink it, just pour it out and say she'll re-brew the coffee herself, one eye on her GPA, one eye on the reading of the scale. You've memorized the small motions and routines that comprise her waking existence. She's made that much clear over the years you've known her.

“Thanks, Latula,” she murmurs, halfway between her husky bedroom tone, and the affect of authoritativeness that characterizes her waking hours.

Then, you hear a loud, indignant voice.

“Who started the party without me?” Mituna calls. “It’s fucking cold here without you guys.”

“So come get some coffee, babe, y'know you wanna,” you reply.

“Yo, fuck that fuckshit, it’s like three in the morning.”

“Actually, it’s 7:30,” Porrim replies.

“Same thing.”

Mituna joins you two in the kitchen, nevertheless.

“Nice butt,” ze says to you, holding your crumpled underwear in one of hir hands.

Porrim snorts and nearly shoots coffee out of her nose, narrowly managing to keep herself composed.

You laugh, loud and free, the sound carrying itself free of Manhattan Chinatown, above the boroughs, and past the bounds of New York City itself.

You wait for it to echo back to you, and smirk at your own audacity. You've done what you meant to this morning, to remind them that there is proverbially and literally something more than what their neuroticism alone comprises. That this something may in fact be sitting and cackling, in their very own kitchen, at this precise moment in time.

You inhale, relax into their arms, and count the seconds up from zero. And they support you. One pale arm, one dark arm.

You exhale.

(You think of first period orchestra class, in the _halcyon days of high school_ , of Mituna on the viola, Porrim on the double bass, and you on the violin.)

_**One,** two, three, **four,** five, six...._

Mituna exhales at three, and Porrim at six and an a twenty-fourth.

You exhale at six and a thirtieth and ignore the fact that you're a half-step off.

A _not-quite_ waltz.

(Damara will laugh if you tell her, her with her poise and her own  **violin** , all perfect  _beat_ , _cadence_ , _step_ , and _melody,_ never questioning, but never challenging you.)

You inhale once more, pale and brown arms supporting your ever-so-slight counterpoint.

A _not-quite waltz_ \- and when you inhale again, Porrim at _three_ , and Mituna at _six,_ and you at both _three_ and _six_  in a waltz - in a not-quite  _waltz -_  to which only  _you three_ know the full steps.

One.

Two.

**_Three._ **

Four

Five

**_Six._ **

Again you exhale at _six and a thirtieth,_ off a second time.

You count and inhale, inhale, _inhale_ until you nearly run out of air.

Then, mercifully, you lose track of the count, Mituna chattering away with no rhythm and Porrim rolling her eyes in response, her count  _maintained_ _but_  her rhythm making _weird_ _emphases_.

You stop counting altogether.

Porrim adds another creamer and more sugar to her coffee. Another creamer. Not even calorie-free, like usual.

Mituna goes quiet and contemplative momentarily before ze starts off on a full-blown rant about how much ze hates multivariable calculus and C++ in earnest.

You're _off_ , you're **_off_  ** _ **balance,**  _but you grin.

You're off balance and you _nearly_ laugh.

You're off balance and you _try_ not to _laugh,_ because as you do so, some primal part of you protests against the lack of  _order._

You're off balance, you  _ **exhale,**_ and you let yourself sag into their embraces.

You laugh, you laugh like a madman until they start laughing at a joke they only _half-understand_ , until all of your ribs hurt from the exercise, _no bows, no strings,_ no boundaries or music sheets whatsoever.

And instead of disorienting you, this just makes you laugh until feel like you've found the right rhythm at last, Mituna's vivace existing against Porrim's adiago, and you somewhere in the middle.

You feel off, but you can ignore it for now.

You _inhale._

You _exhale._

You lose count.


End file.
